Kirk Douglas has a new book on the way from Open Road Media — I Am Spartacus: Making A Film, Breaking The Blacklist. I’m really looking forward to this one.
Here’s a brief sample I came across on making The Indian Fighter (1955) —
“The first Bryna production was a Western called Indian Fighter. I would star in it, along with a new film actor named Walter Matthau. Matthau was a trained stage actor, very successful on Broadway. We got on well. Like me, Walter was the son of Russian immigrants. There we were, two Jewish cowboys from New York riding horses together on a wilderness trail in Oregon. This is how good an actor Walter was. His first two pictures were Westerns and he hated horses. He was afraid of them. Every time Walter got up on a horse, he’d start cursing… in Yiddish: ‘G******, mamzer! You worthless piece of drek, you should be in a glue factory.’ But on film, he was as convincing as Tom Mix. Brilliant actor, funny guy.”
If you haven’t seen The Indian Fighter, you should. Any picture with Douglas, Matthau, Lon Chaney and Hank Worden is worth checking out. It’s also interesting to see how Andre de Toth used CinemaScope.
Mr. Douglas, I yanked out all your paragraph breaks. Sorry.
The Indian Fighter is also interesting as one of the “liberal Westerns” of this period, offering a more sympathetic view of the American Indian than many contemporaneous features. (I say this even though I think the racism of the Western has been slightly exaggerated or at least mischaracterized in general, and the anti-racism of the “revisionist” Westerns is often just as simplistic and condescending as the racism of the films they were intended to correct.)
the portrayal of Indians is far more complex than people realize, There’s a Richard Barthelmess movie I recommend from the early ’30′s, Massacre, it’s like a pre-code Thunderheart.
Jonah, I believe “The Indian Fighter” is actually typical of its period, the 50s from “Broken Arrow” and “Devil’s Doorway” being the strongest pro-Indian phase Hollywood has known and inclusive in some way of almost any Indian film made in the decade. Generally, I’d say the first half of the decade goes to more of the historical elements of white/Indian conflict and broken treaties and things, while the second half of the decade treats more intimate subjects of prejudices toward Indians or half-breeds within towns (“Reprisal” for example),
1956 being a key year that bridges these two threads.
The so-called “racism” of Westerns is entirely a mischaracterization. It is actual American history that has been “racist” toward Indians–movies have shown this and the sympathetic view most of us have toward the Indian side may derive more from 50s movies than from anything else given their wide popularity.
I won’t get started on that word “revisionism”–a word I despise, for it implies that the Westerns of the classical phase, a high point of American art and a nuanced reading of American history within fictional forms, were somehow deficient and needed to be in some way “revised.” For me, within the modernist/post-classical phase–following interesting transitional years in the mid-60s (such as Colin wrote about in his “Rio Conchos” piece)–there are only two really outstanding Indian Westerns–”Ulzana’s Raid” (1972) and “Geronimo: An American Legend” (1993), while “When the Legends Die” (1972) is superb on the place of the Indian in Contemporary America and resonates against the Western and Western motifs in a moving way.
Jonah, I read your comment earlier and when I came back to respond, Blake had covered what I wanted to say, even using the same example — Reprisal (1956), a picture I can’t recommend enough. C’mon Columbia, get with it!
Personally, I’m not a big fan of Broken Arrow (1950), which seems a bit too “sincere” for its own good.
Several of y’all have brought up Geronimo: An American Legend (1993). Haven’t seen it since its theatrical run, and I remember almost nothing about it — guess I need to see it again.
Another Douglas picture whose “Indian-ness” I really like is Last Train From Gun Hill (1959). Kirk’s love of his wife and talk of his Indian father-in-law is good stuff, especially in contrast to Earl Holliman dismissing her as being just a squaw. How I love that movie!
Right, I meant to write “earlier” rather than “contemporaneous.” “Indian Fighter,” as you point out, is just one film in a broad postwar trend of rather explicit, sometimes didactic “pro-Indian” Westerns. Ford’s “Fort Apache” arguably anticipated this trend, but it’s also markedly more complex and provocative than almost anything that followed. I put “revisionist” in scare quotes for a reason, since Westerns have always been a mixed bag–the idea of a block of films of the 1950s or 1960s correcting earlier misrepresentations is largely incorrect. It’s probably best to say that in most Westerns (the most sensitive of them excepted), made during almost any phase in the genre’s development in literature and film, Indians exist largely as stereotypes, and those stereotypes range from the embodiments of wanton violence to that of peace-loving, embattled nobility, often in the same film (and often embodied by the angry young buck on the one hand, and the wizened chief on the other).
I think you are going too far in denying that Westerns can be characterized as racist. I agree that such a characterization is neither adequate nor applicable in the same measure to all films, but I don’t think that it’s simply a question of Westerns representing a reality shot through with racism. Westerns are an incredibly formalized, self-consciously mythic storytelling mode and any given novel or film is as likely to engage/represent any given aspect of history via established tropes.
But a ton has been written about this so I’ll bow out for now…. Thanks for the conversation.
I love that anecdote about Walter being afraid of horses. The Indian Fighter is a nice little gem.
You could live in luxury the rest of your life with the money walter lost on those critters he hated on his race track bets.Douglas broke his nose when he didn’t tilt his head back throwing his sorrell down when it is struck by an arrow in this film.Many years later walter was in the saddle for caseys shadow,a race track film so if the script suited him he would mount.Was it the farce entitled candy where walter trotted a mule.I also seen him canter a horse in an audie murphy western.He had been a bomber under jimmy stewart so he had been a brave man when push come to shove in real life.
Off topic. I watched the Sidonis (French) release of SEVENTH CAVALRY (La Mission du Capitaine Benson) last night and was surprised to find an English soundtrack without subtitles. Also, it’s a decent widescreen anamorphic transfer.
Jonah, I’m not comfortable with the word “stereotypes”–it’s pretty negative. I’m comfortable with the word “archetypes” and if you’d be willing to consider that as an alternative, we don’t disagree. But may I point out this word basically applies to ALL characters in Westerns, and not only Indians. When people say there are no “real” Indians in Westerns, I’d just point out that there are also no “real” Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Billy the Kid, James Brothers, Custer, Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hickock, et al., and that heroes, villains, women, old timers, all begin as archetypes but need not lack any richness as realized because of that, as so many Westerns have shown. Same with Indians.
I stand by my position of the Western as anti-racist in the broadest view. Not every film or filmmaker–de Mille, for example, even if in many ways a good director and I won’t go so far as to say he always takes the simplistic view, seems xenophobic and “Unconquered” especially was hard to take for me. But that’s the extreme positiion and not the pervasive one.
One thing it is important to consider about American Indians–they did not just go gently into the night; they fought back, and rightfully so. This may make for a tragic history, but paradoxically, it also makes for good drama because conflict is such an important part of drama. I’m comfortable with this paradox–it’s art and not actually happening anymore and no one is being hurt any longer on either side. One may experience the catharsis of this drama without rejoicing in the death of anyone on either side.
You’re right that a ton has been written about this–but in recent years, I believe most of it has been wrong. So it’s good to address it. Academic ideological critics have been responsible for these kinds of misperceptions, distorting the Western into what they want it to be, and I for one am kind of a crusader for wanting to see the genre as it really is. This is one genre that fully flowered and became all it could be 1946-1962 especially (and the 50s most of all), and it deserves it.
Working in Advertising, we use “archetypes” all the time. You don’t have the time to really establish a scene, so you put people into situations that are easy to identify. And I think you nailed it, Blake — 50s Westerns (actually, all Westerns) rely on such stuff. Where that gets really interesting is when writers and directors used those archetypes to really play with our heads. Establish a scene we’ve seen a thousand times, then throw the audience a curveball.
I don’t have a real take on racism in these pictures anymore. I’ve become too close to them. All I see is how well the characters were handled on a picture by picture basis — which is why Hondo impressed me so much a few weeks ago. And why (this is gonna get me strung up on a tree at Iverson Ranch) I don’t care much for Broken Arrow — it seems to try too hard at treating the Indians as characters and comes off a bit heavy-handed to me.
For an example on how to do this right, I’ll hold up Reprisal! yet again. (Blake, when are we gonna start the George Sherman Fan Club?)
Watched this for the first time a week or two ago – a decent Western, but not up there with Kirk’s greater films and greater westerns like GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL, LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL and LONELY ARE THE BRAVE.
Got to say, was a tad uncomfortable with his “courting” of Elsa Martinelli – I went through my first 20 odd Douglas films without thinking him too odd, but ever since I saw IN HARM’S WAY, in which he plays a rapist, having subsequently viewed SPARTACUS (didn’t really buy the Kirk/Simmons romance), THE HEROES OF TELEMARK (where his ladiesman persona as a Nuclear scientist doesnt really fit), THE WAR WAGON (where again his seduction techniques are rather creepy) and now this… I’m needing to get back to his good-guy personas of A LETTER TO THREE WIVES and SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, or his rascally sons-of-bitches of stuff like ACE IN THE HOLE.
He’s terrific in Last Train From Gun Hill in the scenes with his kids and dealing with the death of his wife.
You can easily see his love for her — then watch it turn to hate and rage as the pictures goes on. That part fits him like a glove.
I’m one who is sick as can be of the liberal’s revised history of America. This includes the liberal’s revised view of the days of the wild and wooly West. I’m sure if you’re family was massacred, scalped and worse, your view would not be of a kinder gentler one either. Indians did act as savages and did kill viciously in real life. To pretend that Indians were all Jeff Chandler and noble and kind is to live in a real world of utopian fantasy. If it weren’t for the settlers moviing West we’d all be living in Philadelphia today and the West would be nothing but a wilderness. I like the Westerns that reflect in the background the real war that was taking place between “Cowboys & Indians” To now pretend 150 years later that all Indians were sweet and kind and all cowboys were racist goons is like pretending today that all of the al-kaida (sp?) are sweet and kind and the Western world just a bunch of no-nothing uncivilized thugs. The exact opposite of reality in both cases. Yes, there were good and decent Indians and there were more than a fair share of decent and moral Cowboys, to revise history any other way is to rub dirt in the face of every decent human being living then.
Johnny Guitar, you may have misunderstood what at least a few of us are trying to say on this subject, even though I know we don’t entirely agree.
Yes, there were Indian massacres, but there were white massacres too–something earlier history books tried to obscure. There was a lot of hatred on both sides once the fighting started–and that’s why I agree completely with your third sentence and have endless fights with people who now take the attitude “Ethan Edwards is THE SEARCHERS is a racist” and they are that simple about it and refuse to take a view of him as a complex hero, who we root for to overcome his darknesses and take Debbie home rather than killing her. Most of his family was massacred, the woman he silently loved raped as well as killed, the girls kidnapped–he is very well-motivated in being the way he is. But I will point out again what we’ve said before here–that Scar is no less so. And I don’t think any mature viewer can come away with the same attitude toward Indians by the end of the film that they may have at the beginning, when Scar and the Comanches are introduced as the perpetrators of the massacre, because we have come to know too many other things and hopefully by the end have a complex view of the West and some feeling for the tragedy of the Indian and well as empathy for the characters in the white community and especially the hero, whose physical journey is the mirror of one that is awesomely spiritual.
Originally, this land did belong to the Indians. That’s why the term “Native American”–which I never use because I recognize its purely political intention, despite my own sympathies with the Indian–was belatedly coined. Much of the history indicates they were willing to make peace with westward moving white settlers, but these treaties were constantly broken in the name of greed, which probably accounts more for the decimation of the Indian way of life than racism did. A movie like “The Battle of Apache Pass” has it pretty well–as director Walter Hill pointed out once, the army tended to be the Indians’ friend and kept the peace if they could, as that movie shows; it was capitalist adventurers like the Indian agent in the film who were movitaved to displace the Indian.
No one says that all Indians are pure and good, more than any other people, but in the whole history of this they clearly held the right and are the wronged–you might read the comments of veteran directors like Ford and Walsh on this; it’s not only “progressive” directors like Daves, Sherman and Aldrich who can perceive the truth without sentimentalizing the Indian. Walsh’s last film “A Distant Trumpet” maybe best presents my feelings about all this–the hero is a white lieutenant, based on a real character who obtained Geronimo’s peaceful surrender. I’ve also read the novel on which it’s based by Paul Horgan, which is perhaps less on the Indian side but which has elaborate subplots one of them involving an Indian character and his whole history in becoming a scout and finally being betrayed, which motivates what the white hero does at the end.
In many Indian movies, the hero is white and the Indians are functionally the antagonists–this came up in the “Hondo” thread and Toby and I both indicated we are fine with this. I never have a problem with these movies in the maturity of the Western because the Indians’ motivation is always clear and I simply don’t believe we are encouraged to cheer the killing of Indians. The movies are simply reflecting, however reimagined as myth and art, the actual conflict.
I don’t think I’ve said one thing anytime I’ve posted on this blog to say that the white race is bad and that it was wrong for white settlers to want to move West. But to simplify this into some view of “Manifest Destiny” is very questionable. I have to say, Johnny (and you take your name from a favorite character of mine), and will say it without rancor, that the way you express your attitude about Indians as I read it is unbecoming.
I found a few of my spelling mistakes unbecoming. Typing too fast and not reviewing before I post. Classifying one group of people as racists and wanton killers while casting the other side in nobility and innocence is even more unbecoming and an insult to history. There were vicious killings and atrocities committed by the Indians that’s a fact. Response to these atrocities was justified. If the pioneers had simply turned back in fright of further savage attacks civilization would have only occurred to 1/2 the country and we’d probably still be warding off Indian attacks for imagined infringements. With progress comes change, the capitalists are ony the enemy in Socialist leaning auteurs, if it weren’t for capitalists we’d still be rubbing 2 sticks together for warmth and every convenience we now so easily take for granted would never have been invented. How many 1000′s of years went by without the inventions that the 19th & 20th century brought? It was capitalism and the interest in making a profit for one’s self that motivates one to invent and sell to others who benefit from their innovations. Capitalism is a great motivator. Casting capitalism in an evil light is just as wrong as casting Socialism as a paradise. The Indians tried to stop progress, fortunately for all, they were defeated. Is war regretful? Yes. Is it sometimes necessary? Yes. There are always winners and losers, that’s the way of life. The right side won, we should be celebrating, not weeping in shame. It all could have been avoided had the Indians simply acted as nobly as they are portrayed in the revised history of some movies. I enjoy your posts and don’t wish to argue with you as it always boils down to an exercise in futility.
We’re on a different page but I’m letting this go. I don’t wish to argue either. When I post anywhere on any blog it’s not to get into an argument, just to contribute something if I can and share views with others.